“Most seem bent on taking every dialog or discussion on spiritual or philosophical matters straight to the precise place where there is difference, desiring, it would seem, that every discussion become eventually a debate over disputed tenets,” added the rabbi. “A tendency of my fellow Jewish rabbis as well. You, on the other hand, seem always on the lookout for such potential points of discussionary icebergs so that you can intentionally steer your ship clear of them.”

“You have found me out,” laughed the baron. “That is precisely what I try to do.”

“You are an open man, Baron, for one with such strong and personal beliefs.”

“Strength of belief need not make a man stubborn and cantankerous.”

“It often does.”

“I have always found my Father’s hands to be open in gentle invitation to man, rather than stiffly forbidding, as if he were a celestial policeman barring entrance to his presence. I am constantly on the eager lookout for broad areas of harmony and unity, rather than for specific points of difference. I seek brotherhood, wherever it can be found. Few things excite me more than the discovery of brotherhood or sisterhood in another human soul.”

“Do you consider me your brother then, Baron?” asked the rabbi. His voice contained an earnestness that was not lost on the sensitive spirit of Heinrich von Dortmann.

“In the larger sense in which all men are brothers as the created beings of God, most certainly,” the baron replied. “Technically, in the sense in which Christians use the term to indicate others of the Christian faith, what we call brothers in Christ,’ I suppose not. In speaking of the spiritual bonds between us by virtue of our common God, our common spiritual heritage, certainly a brotherhood exists between us on that level. In such a sense, perhaps we are cousins—there is an elder Brother in my family whom I acknowledge relations with, but whom you do not consider your brother. However, we both acknowledge the same God as our Father. We both acknowledge Abraham and Moses and David as our spiritual ancestors and fathers in another sense of the word. So perhaps ‘cousin’ is as close as we can come to defining it.”

“I like it… Cousin von Dortmann!” said the rabbi.

The baron laughed. “So do I, Cousin Wissen.”

After some time, the rabbi once again returned to the point they had left a short while earlier.

“So by knowing God, you mean knowing Jesus?” he said. “And by obeying God, you mean obeying Jesus?”

“I would say that I am able to know the Father intimately because Jesus, as God’s Son, teaches me about and shows me the Father,” replied the baron. “He said that if we have seen him we have also seen the Father.”

He paused and thought a moment.